


be my very own constellation

by courante



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Drabble, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, POV Second Person, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22016263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courante/pseuds/courante
Summary: “Happy holidays,” he says, again, leaning against the table. You take him in: the dark eyes and windswept hair, the healthy tan and full dimples, the way he looks at you like he already knows who you are and where you came from.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	be my very own constellation

**Author's Note:**

> one of those I Had A Fleeting And Spontaneous Feeling, therefore short and unresolved things. i wrote this in late 2018 and forgot about it until today, so uh... thanks for reading!?

You step off the plane to Los Angeles breathless, wondering if this is how it would ever be: rivulets of sweat already cascading down your back as you walk across the tarmac to the evercool labyrinth of LAX. Chill out, you tell yourself, straightening up slowly, knowing all too well all eyes are on your lanky limbs and slow-moving gait. Things are how they should be.

It is not your first time in the sprawling metropolis, one that stretches for miles on end. So different that the people are walking about in their sweaters and uggs, the sound of chattering teeth filling your ears, but it’s really summer to you. 

You’ve been through worse.

Everything you ought to have done for a cross-country move has already been done for you. You clamber into a Lyft after your bags and arrive soon (two hours, a surprisingly pleasant drive) at an apartment complex you’ll be calling home for the foreseeable future. There will be no snow, which is disappointing, but it is what it is. But there are things brighter than snow outside, downtown. You will see them soon.

Night falls; you fiddle with the cables, the Ikea furniture, the height of your bed. You hear meowing outside your window and see glowing eyes flash away the instant you move towards the latch. Maybe you’ll see it again, if it dares come back.

You do not sleep that night.

A few days after the next morning, after instant coffee and a stale bagel, you put on your best boots and head to Disneyland.

The holidays in this part of the country is— you stop and momentarily admire a tremendously ugly statue of a bear, on your way towards where the crowds are surging— loud. Home— the place where you had called home for a stretch, anyhow— is quiet, snowy, tucked away in one of those very white Midwestern towns that start looking like every other Midwestern town the more of farm country you travel through. Bell towers and gingerbread and warm cocoa by the fireside as the wind howls outside. You think a little ruefully about the rabbitskin rug you’d had to leave behind.

Not many people come here alone, and you know you will stand out any other time of the year— from your height to your empty arms. But today the people are too cheerful and too gorged on holiday treats to notice much of anything apart from each other and the fake snow spilling from fairytale rooftops.

As they should.

You’re sipping some frothy minty concoction down in Tomorrowland when someone bumps into your table and everything splashes onto your shirt lapels.

“Oh— oh, shit, I didn’t see ya there— ”

A flash of blinding white teeth is what you see, first; you are reminded of fresh snow at dawn, sunlight glancing off the icicles. The wind has picked up a little, just a little— this is a kingdom of magic, after all, of surprises, whatever it may be beneath it all. You smile and say,

“You’re fine.”

The man offers to buy you a new drink, and you, never one to turn down free food, hum agreeably. Today, drowning in the heady fumes of peppermint and cinnamon and overpriced miscellaneous theme park fare, is the kind of day people allow themselves to give a little more. 

A little more charity in the world never hurt anyone, even when given to someone like you. You’ve lived long enough to take whatever you can get.

It’s colder today, though nothing like what you’re used to. Some surprises are written in gold, however, which you notice as the man comes back in no time with something in a cup decorated with obnoxiously cheery font. You don’t ask what it is before you drink it, not because you don’t care (you do, and considering how sickeningly sweet it is sloshing under your tongue it is a wonder how this man still has all his teeth in pristine form) but because he smiles at you again and you feel something trip in the hollow of your chest that you haven’t felt in decades.

Oh, this is bad.

“Happy holidays,” he says, again, leaning against the table. You take him in: the dark eyes and windswept hair, the healthy tan and full dimples, the way he looks at you like he already knows who you are and where you came from. The kind of easygoing pseudo-affection every young’un carries around here when making small talk. He is not a movie star, you know this somehow, in this city full of nothing but the cosmos brought to life, yet. “And again, sorry about your shirt. I’m Ryan, by the way.”

You snort, thinking you know where this is going. “Great pick-up line, that. I’m Shane.”

“Shane,” he breathes, a warm breeze on the midwinter morning. It tingles all the way down your spine as you hold his gaze. "I'll remember that."

 _You won't_ , you think, desperate, but you simply smile and take another drink before it can falter. It's what they all say. Ryan raises his cup towards you in a would-be toast, two strangers and a serendipitous moment. You think about the glitter beneath your feet and the luminescence in his eyes, and you do the same.

The crowd swells, spilling into the shops lining the street as the parade comes around, the cacophony of music and joyous shouting momentarily distracting you as more bodies brush past, words melting into formless noise. You look again, and he is as gone as your cup is empty.

**Author's Note:**

> > The window was open, and through it I could see the whole of Hollywood spread out below me—the view from the hills: an infinite spread of twinkling multicolored lights.
>> 
>> "Now, aren't these better than stars?" she asked.
>> 
>> And they were. I realized I could see constellations in the street lamps and the cars.  
> 
> 
> \- Neil Gaiman, "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories"


End file.
